Rhyming
by Rayne-Jelly
Summary: Thank you for coming, I know I'm insane, but I always thought my imaginary friends would like me. And I know you thought it would be easier than this, but that's because you were insane too. Post HBP


Disclaimers: I do not own Harry Potter – if I did I can assure you Dumbledore would've gotten worse.

Spoilers: Minimal, few specifics.

**Rhyming**

He was wary, coming to this place, apparating into existence in an unfamiliar living room, startling the hell out of its sole occupant. "Potter?"

"Last time I checked." Said Harry vaguely, wand in hand, ready to fight, and die, and suffer like he had been all year. Fight, suffer, die. Find the next clue, host the next battle, discover something strange and hidden underneath a rock. This was the last of them. Not the last horcrux of course, he'd already found them, chased down the irritating, do-gooder, vigilante that always seemed two steps ahead and always destroyed a significant chunk of Voldemort's story before Harry could reach it. And maybe it was that drive and that horrible desire to catch the bastard up and beat him six ways to Sunday that kept him sane. Because certainly, enduring months of research, weeks of travel, days of fighting and bruises, and weariness so profound the most explicit poets couldn't touch it had driven him closer to the brink than he could ever remember.

"What…" The words came in confusion, because he'd been trapped here for so long, in a windowless room with books, and theory, and nothing at all to distract him from what he'd done in the long hours he spent alone. How did he find him? But the answer seemed obvious to Draco and it was this: He was Harry Potter. So the question turned itself around in his mouth, "What are you doing here?"

"Hunting you actually." The very last thing to do. His very last reason for not going back to the school which couldn't welcome him, and not joining the world which refused to let him be, and not laughing himself to insanity and taking a plunge from the London Bridge.

Draco blinked fuzzily and sat up, muscles creaking, joints popping, he had been trapped here for so long with no mental stimulation save his somewhat deranged former potions master and the books he thought he could lose himself in. "To kill me right?" And there was more hope in his voice than he would have liked. Harry laughed, short and sharp and less of a laugh than Draco had ever heard out of him, had it really been a year? The calendar was changed every day, the pantry renewed itself, the room stayed clean, and dry, and there was a small bathroom just behind the couch. Potter was still Potter, and somehow greater than the Potter he'd been before, Draco felt pale beside him. "You've found me haven't you? I suppose you want revenge for… what I did to Dumbledore."

"What?" asked Harry rhetorically, "pointed a wand at him and whined a little? He's seen worse from a first year I'm sure." Something of a hysterical giggle escaped him, why was he here? He had crawled on his last legs to somewhere muggle, somewhere populated, somewhere where someone nice would ring for an ambulance and put back the pieces he hadn't quite managed to lose. If they'd wondered what an eighteen year old boy was doing lying in the street with unexplainable injuries and a strange scar on his forehead, no one had asked. So Harry woke up, and paid up, and walked away. And he'd tried the wizarding world, but fame comes at a cost to those that deserve it. And he'd tried drinking himself to blind oblivion, but someone always found him and dragged him away from the bar, and left him in an alley, and he always woke up because he was Harry Potter and waking up was his forte. "You're the last."

"Of what?" His family? Harry's enemies? The news wasn't much of a shock, he could believe it, sitting here in the stunned silence of the surrounding room, the room was always silent. Well furnished, well stocked, always silent. Draco was a crap singer, always off key, couldn't remember the words; he sang. Harry's voice was that familiar dream in all the time he spent sleeping, and never really knowing if he was awake. He would have given his voice for freedom, or the company of even a ghost. Harry the Hero. Draco the Diminished.

Harry didn't answer the question. Malfoy hadn't moved, neither had he, because it didn't seem necessary and the familiar soul of insults and mockery was gone from their conversation. He didn't want it back; he wanted to regain equal footing. "I killed Severus Snape."

"You've been wanting to for years." Draco bit back a smile that turned into a dim laugh. He couldn't be sure of it anymore, couldn't know for certain that it wasn't the room, that it wasn't the books that were erasing his mind. Memories he could fall back on were tainted by the doubt of their ever having existed. In the first month he was relieved, happy to be away from the world, and his father, and the death eaters, and his responsibilities, and the terror that drove him day and night, he grew restless, and the restlessness turned on him. His mind was no longer what it was, he thought, and couldn't be sure of that either. Was this Azkaban? This well furnished little space with books and toiletries, and food, and memories he wasn't sure were real. Potter was in many of them, happy, and sad, and angry, and he couldn't be sure if the look of devastated fury on Harry's face as he and the Potions Master had apparated away was real. Was Harry real now, or was he some figment designed to keep Draco entertained – Harry was really all there was right now. Harry the Hypocrite. Draco the Desperate.

The laugh again, that wasn't a laugh. A dark and stormy night, appropriate to horror stories and bad novels written by pubescent imbeciles. Flickering lightning, the mad cackle of an evil scientist, it had all been there when Harry was found by the Dark Lord. A race to destroy the last horcrux – and Voldemort had died, and Harry had woken up in a hospital bed somewhere, and dragged himself away, and hunted down everything that reminded him of Tom Riddle, and everything that reminded him of Albus Dumbledore, or Sirius Black, or Cedric Diggory, or his own damned Parents, and he'd eradicated it, thoroughly bleaching his life. Draco the Detained. Harry the Hunter. Snape had hexed him, thrown curses at him, shielded himself, and not for the first time in his life Harry felt Snape's gaze murder him. But Snape had frozen like a deer before a rifle, choosing not to run, and Harry hadn't thought twice about it. It hadn't gone easy on him – Harry wanted nothing so simple as a flash of green light before absolute oblivion, and Professor Severus Snape had bled to death on the floor of his pristine white kitchen. Harry couldn't return home after that. "Not really."

"I have." It was quiet again, and Draco drudged up those false memories and the ones he hoped to god were real. And he was sad, and he was in pain, and he knew those ones were the realities because nothing in life would ever be good – the books in the room had taught him that, leaving him pained and unsatisfied by happy endings of fiction. And there was Harry Potter, being Harry Potter and ridiculously… himself. And Severus Snape, who had put him in this place, and had fought and coddled and promoted the ugly mark inside his arm which no longer had meaning. Severus Snape that had a hand in all of his favorite things, Quidditch, Potions, Freedom, and locked him away from it all. Draco the Devastated. Harry the Hermetic. It was hard to remember their names, they were inconsequential. "Where are… the Mudblood and the Weasel?"

Harry shrugged, he'd shrugged off his friends, foregone their company, escaped Hermione's worried stares, Ron's blatant jealousy, and anger, and idolatry. It hadn't been thoughts of his tumultuous relationships with the people that proposed to love him that had kept him. Nothing had kept him, and little had kept him sane except that thinking about Ron and Hermione ruined the illusion he had going, and that he had nothing to lose, and no one to lose him, and that he could die in peace knowing it. So he made it happen, and went off to die. And didn't actually manage it because he never had before. "Gone."

Long moments of silence that dragged, into the brief stir of air and the definite passing of time until Harry could have been there for months in the room with him, static and unchanging as Draco was. It might have been Harry moving, or Draco another aspect of his delirium in abject loneliness, or it might have been Harry sitting next to him, putting a weight on the divan that had not been there before and might have been another depth to his isolation. "What happened?" A pause, he stammered. Draco the Demented. Harry the Hallucination. "To you… out there?"

The penultimate question. He'd been asked and asked around the bend again, reliving the moment of terror, feeling Voldemort's magic close around his heart and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and maybe he owed Draco the most explanation because he hadn't been there, he hadn't been anywhere except this nowhere place, and needed Harry maybe as much as Harry thought he needed him. "I fought… I tried. He killed me. …. He died." And that was the best he could do, because Harry didn't know how things had come about, or why he'd gotten up in the end, or exactly who had picked him up when he was dead and resuscitated him. And he'd healed. And he'd gone after the death eaters, avoiding his life, picking them off, scouring the world. And he'd found Snape. And he'd picked up the pieces.

Draco wanted to move closer – wanted to verify reality, wondered if he knew the difference when he felt it. Realized that it didn't really matter if Harry was real or not because he was here, and in the room, and sad, and Draco was silent. Draco was Distracted. Harry was Here. "That rhymed."

"Sue me." Sarcasm was something he'd learned, developed late as a survival trait against the world. Sarcasm reminded him of school, and what it felt like to be genuine, and sarcasm reminded him of the days when He and Malfoy would have brawling fits on the Quidditch pitch because they could. And Sarcasm reminded him of Malfoy, and sarcasm may have saved his life. He thought about those days in the strangest moments, in his camp bed where he'd learned that uncomfortable was better than dead, and working deep into theory at various midnights then finding it was all irrelevant because he flew best by the seat of his pants – and he thought about Draco Malfoy, and Sarcasm, and the things People Shouldn't Say to each other but do anyway. It made him smile then, and here and now Harry wondered if Wizards had such things as meaningless lawsuits.

"I might." Harry laughed, finally laughed, and Draco smiled because that laugh was so good to his muffled ears. And Raitslin it was a good feeling to laugh along side someone who was his friend in strange moments, and who he'd walked through a deadly forest with, and fought with, and hated, and obsessed over, and who worried when no one else noticed. Draco the Delighted. Harry the Happy. He could stay happy forever, he could stay delusional forever, he could stay here like this with Harry forever as long as the memories came back real, and as long as he had company, and as long as the Room didn't steal that joy from him too… but he couldn't. "Why are you here?"

"You were the last." Harry said, and the words hadn't changed much since the last time he said them. The last piece of business on his agenda, the last person he had to confront, to leave, to say good bye to, to kill, to make amends, the last person on his list before he could die. He wanted to die now, it was time, with all the people around him dead, and all the people around him that wanted him gone because they didn't know how to handle The Boy that Lived Without Purpose, and every enemy he'd ever made vanquished. Malfoy was the last, and it made him so sad, Harry the Heartless. Draco the Damaged. "The only important one."

"Because Harry, if you're real I love you."

And they left the room: or they didn't. And they lived happily ever after: or they didn't. And Harry learned that smiling was easy, and Draco learned that his memories could be trusted: or they didn't. And there wasn't a lot else he could say but, "I love you too I guess."

* * *

A/N: Not what you were expecting? Me neither to be perfectly frank with you, I've been reading way too goddamned much horrendously sad (and incredibly beautiful) Harry/Draco fics and this was the brain child of Thai Curry and an allergy attack. Really – NOT what I had in mind for my first HBP fic, but I think I sort of like it. … in the way that one likes depressing, deranged, demented, and damaged little things. Came completely out of left field.

In case you've guessed it, the title didn't have anything to do with all the alliterations, those were really more a throwback to famous wizards of the 17th century, the title had to do with Harry killing Voldemort.

Assume what you will after the fact.


End file.
